Video services have become increasingly important in today's society. In certain architectures, service providers may seek to offer sophisticated video conferencing services for their end users. The video conferencing architecture can offer an “in-person” meeting experience over a network. Video conferencing architectures can deliver real-time, face-to-face interactions between people using advanced visual, audio, and collaboration technologies. Some issues have arisen in video conferencing scenarios where mechanical parts can obscure portions of a video conference. Deficient effective viewpoints can distort the video images being sent to participants in a video conference. The ability to optimize video environments provides a significant challenge to system designers, device manufacturers, and participants of video conferences.